55a. [Minimum number of roles an actor can get? (Surprise! Did you expect a clue about hardwood?)] PARQUET FLOOR

80a. [Field for analyzing an old medical show? (Surprise! Did you expect a clue about LGBT issues?)] QUEER STUDIES

93a. [Against a Vegas worker? (Surprise! Did you expect a clue about selling heirlooms?)] ANTIQUE DEALER

111a. [Valentine’s alias, briefly? (Surprise! Did you expect a clue about a famous drummer?)] QUESTLOVE

114a. [“Are there breaks in this song?” (Surprise! Did you expect a clue about asking what someone wants from the market?)] ANY REQUESTS

All the theme entries contain QU, which is unexpected, but not the complete surprise. The theme is explained at 115d. [Word of Spanish inquisition that maybe you didn’t expect to see in this puzzle’s theme entries]. The answer is QUÉ, the Spanish word for “what,” as in “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition ¿QUÉ?…to show up in their crossword entries!” Removing these letters allows the clues to make sense. A “female horse handle” is not a MARQUEE NAME but a MARE NAME, chatting with Hume is SO, BRIT, and so on.

Also included in 117a. and 21a. [With 21 Across, member of the comedy troupe that made this puzzle’s title famous] is ERIC IDLE of Monty Python. I hadn’t watched any of their ‘Spanish Inquisition’ bits until now, so please enjoy if you wish.

Other things:

Blergh.

Nice fill crossing the Qs of the theme entries, including QATARI, I QUIT, ESQUIRE, and

41d. [Strawberry ___ (old Nestlé drink)] QUIK. The product line was called Nesquik in most countries and became Nesquik worldwide in 1999. I remember drinking powdered chocolate Nestlé QUIK as a child, but I remember using the strawberry syrup instead of the powder, and it looks like they were completely Nesquik by then. Not a fan of the strawberry.

8d. [West once on TV] ADAM. Rest in peace, Batman.

69d. [Self important person?] Tried to fit EGOIST here when I had only the E and I in place (even though the I is in the wrong spot for EGOIST). Eventually got EDITOR, partly thanks to the neighboring TIE ROD mentioning it’s an anagram of 69d. Finally realized the clue contains a hidden capital S, and we’re looking for an important person for the magazine Self.

47d. [Golden Corral offering] BUFFET. My father likes to eat at Golden Corral, so we wind up there when we visit my parents. I started solving crosswords thanks to him. He would finish what he could, and I started getting the crossword dictionary and the regular dictionary and the encyclopedia to try to figure out the remaining spots. Eventually I would try to grab the paper before he woke up on the weekends. (He wasn’t a fan of that.) Anyway, I owe him a ton of gratitude for starting me on this almost-lifelong hobby. Thank you, Dad.

Until next week.

Will Nediger’s New York Times crossword, “First for Knowledge”—Amy’s write-up

NY Times crossword solution, 7 9 17, “First for Knowledge”

The theme takes familiar phrases (like the title’s base phrase “thirst for knowledge”) and changes a TH sound into an F sound. The results are decent:

24a. [Make lots of people stop in their tracks?], FREEZE A CROWD. Three’s a crowd.

63a. [Brother who’s a criminal?], FELONIOUS MONK. Thelonious. I’m sure this was the theme’s germ, as we’ve all made that Thelonious/felonious wordplay.

86a. [Annoy actors Keaton and Crabbe?], MIFF BUSTERS. Mythbusters.

105a. [Safety worry?], SECURITY FRET. Threat. “Fret” is mostly a verb, but I just now learned that it’s also a British noun meaning “a state of anxiety or worry.” Will is Canadian, so perhaps that usage is more familiar to him than to this American.

Solid sound-substitution theme. I wish the title were different, though, since 86d ME FIRST repeats a title word.

Mind blown: 15a. [Noted brand once owned by a utopian colony in Iowa], AMANA. All these years of crossword clues referencing the Amana Colonies and Amana appliances, and not once do I recall learning that they’re the same Amana people.

Fresh CHE clue! 67a. [Subject of the photo “Guerrillero Heroico”], CHE Guevara. The iconic T-shirt/poster design is drawn from this photo, which the photographer cropped to remove another guy and a palm tree. I learned about the photo’s circumstances from a Learned League trivia question this spring: “A memorial service for victims of the 1960 explosion of the French freighter La Coubre in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, has been recorded (and duplicated) for posterity thanks to a photograph taken there of what man?”

Favorite clue: 42d. [About which you might ask “One lump or two?”], CAMEL. I wanted SUGAR. It’s true that we speak of camels’ humps rather than lumps, but I still liked being tricked.

Fill’s mostly solid. Four stars from me. Also! Check out Will’s blog, Bewilderingly, for a new crossword each Monday.

The beginning and end of each long answer have circled letters that spell out a type of grain. The revealer is 110a. [Deep-rooted … and what the uncircled letters of the answers to starred clues are?], INGRAINED—those letters are found within the grains.

OPERA HATS, WHISKEY NEAT, RITUAL DANCE (that’s a thing?), ROVING EYE, BARNUM AND BAILEY, COFFEE URN, MILLED ABOUT, and the lovely MAIN SQUEEZE are enclosed by oats, wheat, rice, rye, barley, corn, millet (my favorite whole seed in bread!), and maize. Corn and maize are the same thing in this country, so I’m docking a point for that.

11 Responses to Sunday, July 9, 2017

One of my life’s biggest regrets is that I didn’t get to direct “Six Characters in Search of an Author” in college, when I was involved in Chicago’s University Theater. If I had discovered the play earlier, I would have worked to steadily raise my directing profile in order to be able to direct it senior year. This puzzle’s ending was bittersweet for me.

NYT was easy but fun. MIFF BUSTERS and FELONIOUS MONK, in particular, made me smile, and I was baffled for longer than I should have been by TRIREME as I tried to think of another word for AMPHORA. I’ll share the wish for a different title — not because of the dupe, but because it gave away too much too early. Read the title; “Oh, I bet it’ll be a sound switch.” I can avoid reading Notepad entries, but titles are hard to ignore.

Found the WaPo kind of boring. The added letters theme was obvious early on, and the “funny” part of over half the theme answers made me groan. BRIDAL BOUT was cute, but PART FLOOR and ANTI-DEALER and ANY RESTS and the like were just trying too hard. And I’d expect ANY REQUESTS at a piano bar, not from someone heading to the market; that’s a “Do you need anything?”

Late comment, as usual. Did the puzzle last night and found some of the substitutions hilarious. I have never played with Monk’s name, so I could still enjoy that and the SIX CHARACTERS were just as, if not more, funny. I never pay attention to titles unless I am stuck. This crossword didn’t require that and it went fast. I usually skip large crosswords and send them on to others.

Amy, I don’t know what to call a woman with a roving eye but the question reminded me of a word I learned just recently – cicisbeo, escort or lover for a married woman.

I used to watch Monty Python as a teenager so I got an extra kick out of the WaPo puzzle. The humor may be dated, and sexist, and probably has loads of other problems. But all I saw as a teenager was the absurdity and wordplay so it really made me laugh.